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<\/p>\nIn the classroom
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Kelli Boklaschuk, superintendent of student programming at Sask. DLC, said they wanted to gauge interest with the RFP and find out what might be available.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know AI is prevalent pretty much everywhere, but we know that we can also use it to really support learning and so we\u2019re really curious what we can do to incorporate some AI. We don\u2019t want to block it; we actually want to leverage the use of it,\u201d said Boklaschuk.<\/p>\n
She said they would want to have a lot of control over the program,\u00a0so they could feed it information like the Saskatchewan curriculum\u00a0and get out of it the skills they want students to learn.<\/p>\n
When describing what this would look like practically, she said they would probably want it to be more of a learning companion.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are looking at potentially a tutor situation, but really that opportunity for students to have an even fuller relationship with their teacher,\u201d Boklashchuk explained.<\/p>\n
That would include the AI being available at all times of day when the teacher isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe would see a tool like this supporting that relationship between the teacher and the student and providing the opportunity for teachers to engage with our students even more \u2013 so, providing them even more support and then having personalized learning opportunities,\u201d said Boklaschuk.<\/p>\n
She explained that, if a student needed an adaptation, for example, the AI tool would help create those resources even faster.<\/p>\n
Boklaschuk said, with an AI, it would be important for students to continue developing critical thinking, creativity and communication skills.<\/p>\n
Education Minister, Everett Hindley, echoed Boklaschuk\u2019s comments, saying the DLC doesn\u2019t want to ignore the technology.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t simply stick our heads in the sand and pretend that this isn\u2019t here. AI is here. And we need to figure out what those guardrails are,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The minister explained it would be important for students to be able to use the program as a tool instead of as a crutch.<\/p>\n
Neither Hindley nor Boklaschuk believe an AI built for the DLC would eliminate jobs. Hindley said the teachers he\u2019s spoken to are looking at it as a way to make their jobs easier.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there\u2019s a number of them that are very excited about it, about the opportunities to use AI to help them in the work they do each and every day. And perhaps find some efficiencies in the work that they do as teachers,\u201d explained the minister.<\/p>\n
Uncharted territory<\/p>\n
Finding an AI or a company to build what Sask. DLC is looking for could be tough.<\/p>\n
Dr. Adam Dub\u00e9 is an associate professor at McGill University and is the director of its technology, learning and cognition lab. He said the RFP appears to be looking for a very broad-ranging AI solution and while there are some programs that might solve one or two of the objectives, there aren\u2019t any that would do it all right now, to his knowledge.<\/p>\n
For an AI that could serve as a learning companion or tutor, Dub\u00e9 said this is uncharted territory.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it comes to the tutor side of things, critically, there\u2019s very little to almost no research on the efficacy of these tools for elementary and high school students,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
He said he\u2019s done systematic reviews in this area. There have only been a handful of studies done, and they\u2019re not very robust.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re asking something to be built that we don\u2019t have strong evidence that it works or we don\u2019t have a good insight into what works and what doesn\u2019t work,\u201d said Dub\u00e9.<\/p>\n
The biggest concern, he said, is that students learning with an AI tutor would use it as a crutch, relying on the system to give them answers.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny system that\u2019s going to be built for student use has to be very specifically designed so that it\u2019s not doing work on students behalf and that it facilitates students\u2019 mastery of the content of the skills, even when the tool isn\u2019t present,\u201d he explained, going on to say there\u2019s no version that\u2019s been tested and shown to work this way.<\/p>\n
While Dub\u00e9 said the DLC has the right mindset in looking for guardrails to promote critical thinking, he said it would be difficult to include that for such an AI because no one could say what it would need to look like and how it could work.<\/p>\n
He said there could be an opportunity there, but he repeated that it\u2019s uncharted territory, so there\u2019s some hesitancy as to whether it would be successful.<\/p>\n
On the side of an AI that teachers would use, Dub\u00e9 said it\u2019s unclear whether it would actually make teachers more efficient or if they would have to spend just as much time correcting and improving the AI\u2019s lessons or worksheets. He pointed to coders who have been found to be less productive using AI because they have to go back and correct its mistakes.<\/p>\n
While the DLC and minister didn\u2019t believe an AI would result in job losses, Dub\u00e9 said AI is a labour replacement tool, at its base, so there could be concerns it will be used to replace teachers or not hire more.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey might not fire people, but (they might decide) we don\u2019t need to hire more people, because we have this to make it more efficient,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
While the RFP asked for a one-to-three year implementation road map, there may not be an AI in every DLC classroom in three years\u2019 time. Boklaschuk said the RFP was put out so the DLC could get more information about the possibilities and that it would be open to having further conversations about it.<\/p>\n
Hindley was a bit more bullish on the idea. He said the DLC is testing the waters a bit, but he thinks it\u2019s going to amount to something and end up being implemented.<\/p>\n
He said it\u2019s hard to be ahead of things like this, but the DLC has the opportunity to help shape the future of AI in the classroom, and figuring out what that might look like is part of the point of the RFP.<\/p>\n
by Lisa Schick – CKOM News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the classroom Kelli Boklaschuk, superintendent of student programming at Sask. DLC, said they wanted to gauge interest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":567931,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,61],"class_list":["post-567930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}